Archive for September, 2009

It’s that time of the year again. I’ll be headed up to Ohiopyle to enjoy the Buckwheat dinner prepared by the Ohiopyle-Stewart Volunteer Fire Department. The Fall event is only on Friday and Saturday, October 9 and 10. I’ll be there on Saturday.

It takes a tough guy to make a tender pancake.

Al Smith is in charge of making the sour dough buckwheat cakes. He takes a lot of ribbing from the other guys but that’s just because the cakes are so good that they’re afraid it would go to his head if they were complimentary. All starts about a week ahead of time to start the sour dough cooking.

Imported from West virginia

Here's some of the starter bubbling away.

He uses real buckwheat that they now have to import from West Virginia since none of the local farmers still grow the crop. The starter bubbles and gurgles for a week to develop that distinctive aroma and tangy taste. (If you really don’t care for buckwheat, they have conventional pancakes as well.) The cakes are the stars but the supporting players are pretty impressive.

There are whole hog sausage patties, mountains of home fries, bowls of apple sauce, real maple syrup and even sweet pickle slices.

Everything is made from scratch.

Lots and lots of sausage.

Outside the community center and the fire hall you can shop for hand made gifts, and some times fresh apple cider. Don’t miss this real slice of American life. They will be serving from 10 am to 8pm each day.

After 20 years I finally made it back to Rome – this time to visit my daughter Maryann and her husband, Andrew. He was just finishing up a year at the American Academy as a winner of the Rome Prize for architecture. We got to stay at the Academy which sits atop the Gianicolo with a commanding view of St. Peter’s and pretty much all of Rome to the Appenine Mountains.

Rooftop view of Rome

If you want to know about all the sights to see in Rome, get the Rick Steves book. I just want to sing the praises of the food. A few highlights:

The coffee: It’s everywhere. There must be thousands of coffee bars in the city all serving perfect little cups of espresso topped with a foamy crema. Each morning started with a dopio and either a freshly made scone or a cornetti (croissant) sometimes filled with pastry cream or chocolate. Forget scrambled eggs and bacon in this town. They love their sweet pastries and bitter coffee.

The market: My favorite was the Campo deFiore

At the market in Campo deFiore

where you can buy everything from clothing to zucchini blossoms. They seem to have an interesting, three-tiered pricing system. The highest price (usually listed on a makeshift card) is for tourists who don’t speak Italian. Slightly lower prices can be negotiated if you speak Italian. And finally, the locals have the rock bottom prices. Actually, it all looked reasonable to me given the quality and variety of the fruits and vegetables. We also visited similar markets in Trastevere and Tastaccio. They really love their zucchini. Most markets had several varieties and bushels full of blossoms for stuffing and frying.

Street Food: Of course there are pannini and pizza everywhere. But we stumbled into a place called FORNO right on the Campo deFiore that had the freshest, most delicious versions of Roman pizza we had all week. I walked around to the ovens and watched as one of the bakers stretched a piece of dough until it was six feet long and thin enough to read a paper through. He slid it onto a huge peel and then directly into the ancient wood fired ovens that give a distinctive aroma and crispy finish to the final product. Inside the crowded shop they also have arancini (Sicilian Rice Balls), and Suppli (Roman Rice Balls). Next door they have another store devoted to sweets. Don’t miss the Brute ma buono. They have them all over the city but none better than here.

Restaurants: The first night we went to a place on the Gianicolo called Scarpone’s.

Eating Al Fresco at Scarpone

There’s a big shoe out front to tell you this is the place. You can sit outside under an arbor if the weather is nice and enjoy the fantastic array of antipasti and plenty of pasta choices. The next night we went to a place called Orso 80. Now here is the place for antipasti. For 15 Euros they bring out a seemingly endless stream of dishes from fragrant proscuitti on ripe cantelope to meatballs in tomato sauce, fried peppers, celery and anise salad, potatoes and mushrooms, stuffed and fried zucchini blossoms, sauteed zucchini slices, eggplant, beans, and on and on. Only go here if you are really hungry!